


Dwelling

by disarm_d



Series: Draft Class 2015 [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domestic Fluff, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Multi, Relationship Negotiation, Snowballing, Spanking, oh boy this is going to be an interesting assortment of tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-18 02:23:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12378894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/pseuds/disarm_d
Summary: Dylanmighthave two boyfriends, but in case he's wrong he doesn't want to bring it up and find out for sure.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is both the sequel and the prequel to [Threshold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10730325), which took place right before the main action of this story. You don't have to read that one to understand this, though there are references to that story in this one. 
> 
> The story is done and betaed, but it's really got a lot of porn so I'm going to post it in parts over the next week or so because I think it might be good not to read it all at once. I have never posted a story in parts before in the entire time I've been in fandom, so we'll see how it goes. I hope it works for you guys! 
> 
> Massive thanks to [threeturn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn) for helping me fix this up. She's really just the smartest, most generous, also hilarious, basically just overall best friend anyone could ever hope for, even when I go off and write excessively Canadian stories in a fandom she's not a part of. Ily, bb!

Dylan had left Connor’s condo in such a hurry that he hadn’t remembered his phone, but fuck it. He could make the drive to Mitch’s parents’ house with his eyes closed. Or he could if there wasn’t traffic. Someone veered into his lane and he swerved halfway onto the shoulder and laid on the horn. The person just gave a wave like Dylan had intentionally let them cut in, as opposed to just saved both of their lives, or at least the couple of hours it would have taken to go to one of those fucking crash reporting centers except a crash on the highway meant the OPP or like, fuck, it didn’t matter, they hadn’t actually crashed. Dylan’s heart was kicking at his rib cage. Imagine if one time he could drive on the 401 without staring down almost certain death. 

Some of the jackets had fallen from where they were piled on the passenger seat to the floor, but like fuck those blazers, basically. Fuck Mitch for leaving them, and fuck Connor for being a ginger ostrich about this whole thing. Dylan was the only sane person -- out of the three of them, out of all the maniacs on the highway trying to swerve their way out of gridlock, out of all of Toronto and the whole GTA. Maybe out of the whole world. 

Dylan felt energized by righteous martyrdom, and then a navy jacket slipped down to join the others on the floor and Dylan felt sad again. He’d known this was going to happen, and now that it actually was happening, he felt even crappier about it. Like he had known, but he’d also _hoped_ , and now he felt like a fucking fool.

\--

The first time they got together was in Connor’s hotel room over draft weekend at like 3 am. It was after they had all been drafted and done fully one million interviews, like so many interviews that Dylan genuinely had lost any mouth-brain connection, every single word he said was fully on autopilot. He’d spent a lot of time touching Connor and Mitch in front of the cameras, because it was comforting to be near their familiar bodies in the midst of all the chaos. And then they’d seen their families and all the other guys and basically just went back to Connor’s room because he had a sweater of Dylan’s that Dylan wanted back, and somehow Mitch was there too, Dylan couldn’t even remember now. The whole weekend was such a blur. 

The hotel room was silent except for all the noise of people in the halls. Like they were away from the ruckus, but not removed from it entirely. Dylan had never been so tired before but he didn’t want to sleep. He bounced on Connor’s bed, threw himself at Mitch and wrestled him to the floor. Connor tried to step over them, but they brought him down as well. You can’t wrestle two people at the same time, so it just sort of turned into bodies touching. He’d already lost any semblance of a personal space bubble, but he noticed it when Connor got hard against his thigh. He noticed that before he noticed that he was hard as well. 

“Eh,” Mitch said, once it had become obvious that they were just being handsy, any semblance of roughhousing long gone. “Being in the NHL means we get to have threesomes now.”

“With _girls_ ,” Dylan said.

“Okay, bud, so you go find six girls. We’ll just wait right here.”

“Why six girls?”

“Because two girls per--”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Connor said. “I will suck off whoever of you shuts up first.”

Mitch started saying, “Do you mean like--”

“Dylan it is,” Connor said.

 _Ha_ , Dylan mouthed, but silently, and using his hand to block his mouth from Connor’s view, because he didn’t want to lose his blowjob. 

“I saw that,” Connor said, even though actually that would be impossible unless he had x-ray vision. 

Dylan just stayed silent, his mouth clamped closed, and raised his eyebrows very high on his forehead. 

Connor still sucked Dylan’s dick, and then Dylan tried to suck off Mitch while Mitch attempted to suck off Connor because he wanted them to do a daisy chain (which Dylan was pretty sure was not the right term, but Mitch kept hitting Dylan’s face with his cock when Dylan tried to point that out). It was not feasible for three people to suck each other off all at the same time, and to be honest Dylan didn’t really even like sixty-nining. (Learning that had sure been a disappointment because he had worked quite hard to convince his ex-girlfriend to try it, and then it really ended up not being worth the hype.) He’d never tried sixty-nining with a guy, but the three-way blowjob thing was more of a core workout than anything else, trying to stay in the right position. 

Dylan had been a little drunk and fully tripping balls high on adrenalin so he didn’t remember most of how the night went, just these brief moments of clarity: when Connor got the suction _perfect_ and Dylan realized he was going to come. The first slip of Mitch’s tongue into his mouth while Dylan was still shaking through the aftershocks. The way Connor’s back felt at the end, after they had all come and they were just lying there. 

Dylan remembered the line of Connor’s spine, how real his skin had felt. He’d pushed Connor face down on the mattress because he wanted Mitch to feel too. Thinking back, he realized how loopy he must have been, nonsensical with exhaustion, but for once Mitch had skipped the chance to chip him and had let Dylan guide his fingers down the river of Connor’s spine. 

\--

They hadn’t all been in the same place again until Christmas, and then the place they were all at was Dylan’s parents’ home. They played street hockey and the argument over who would have to play goalie got heated enough to wipe away any awkwardness that might have lingered. It was almost like nothing had happened at all, until at the very end of the day, when it was technically already the next day. The rest of the guys had gone and Dylan’s family was in bed. It was just the three of them, and Mitch said, “I think I figured out how we could all suck each other off at the same time.”

“Dude,” Dylan said. 

“I’m not saying we _have_ to. Just that I think I figured it out. God, don’t be sensitive.”

“I’m not being _sensitive_ , I just didn’t realize we were planning another threesome in my childhood bed.”

“It’s not your childhood bed if you still live with your parents,” Mitch said. “It’s just your bed.”

“You still live with your parents, you douchenozzle.”

“As the only person who does not live with his parents,” Connor said, “I guess you could tell us more about that blowjob thing.”

“Okay, so Dylan would be on his back, and I’d be fucking his face, and --”

“Nope,” Dylan said. 

“Ugh,” Mitch said, trying to hit Dylan in the balls. “Just let me finish.”

He didn’t get Dylan’s balls, but he kind of hurt Dylan’s thigh, so Dylan punched him back, and was almost successful at dead-legging him 

“ _Okay_ ,” Mitch said, rubbing at his leg. “Okay, someone’s on his back--”

“It’s going to be me, isn’t it,” Connor said.

“Yup,” Dylan said, still holding his own thigh.

“Just _someone_ ,” Mitch said. “Stop interrupting me.”

But Connor was already moving to lie down on this back, and, like, that was distracting, obviously. And then Mitch fucked his face and Dylan could sort of see the point in wanting to try to do a chain with all three of them, because it would have been hot if there was a way that he could simultaneously fuck Mitch’s face, but he just went down to suck Connor’s dick instead, and that was good, too. 

\--

It was good the next time as well, and like obviously Dylan didn’t want to overthink it, but he did spent a lot of time thinking about it because, like. Threesomes, that was sweet. Threesomes with his best friends. They didn’t see each other that much, and over their phones they kind of just acted like normal, and they all dated other people and played hockey and, like, that was it, basically. They played a lot of hockey, it took up a lot of time. 

And now it had been two years, and it wasn’t like Dylan had had more sex with them than he’d ever had with anyone else, because he legitimately didn’t see them that often, but it had been _quite_ a lot of sex. Now it was the summer and he thought he might have accidentally moved into Connor’s condo. 

It was stupid that Connor was the only one of them who actually had a place in Toronto since he didn’t even live here during the year, but he said it was an investment. He couldn’t explain _how_ it was an investment, since it sat empty all year except when his parents stopped by to look in on it. Probably it would have made more sense to rent out that sucker, but he didn’t. He just lived there during the summer, and now Dylan might have moved in with him. Dylan didn’t want to bring it up and find out for sure, because that just opened the door for Connor to be all, _Yeah, it was fun while it was chill but now you need to find somewhere else to live_. Not talking about it was the preferable option, but had also led to a stalemate. 

Dylan slept there every night. He had all of his favorite clothes in one of the drawers of Connor’s dresser and threw his laundry in Connor’s basket. At least once a week, he went to his parents’ house for dinner, but he never slept over, just sometimes grabbed more clothes. Pretty soon his stuff wasn’t going to be able to fit in that one drawer any more. They should put another dresser in the guest room or something, but Dylan couldn’t just go buy a dresser for Connor’s condo, because then it was like a statement that he lived there, and he also couldn’t ask Connor to buy him a dresser, because then Connor would figure out that he was living there. 

Connor probably didn’t want Dylan to move in. He likely assumed that, like Mitch, Dylan was just in the process of finding his own place. And he _would_ be, if he knew which fricken city he was going to be playing in next year. Like was he going to be sent down to the A, was this going to be the year he actually played for the Coyotes, was he saying fuck it and getting a job waiting tables at Sneaky Dee’s, who knew, there were options, sort of. He’d definitely need at least five tattoos before he was getting a job at Sneaky Dee’s, specifically, but there were other restaurants in Toronto. There were other sports, too. Maybe he was great at curling, but he just didn’t know it yet, and those other three times he had tried and _sucked_ were just flukes. 

In the meantime, he was not not-living with Connor and also sort of Mitch, and that meant that sometimes Mitch would march into the room while Dylan and Connor were playing video games, stand in front of the TV until they put the game on pause, and said shit like: “Do you think that someone should give Connor a spanking?”

“Dude,” Dylan said. 

“Dude,” Mitch echoed back. 

Nothing, said Connor. 

He seemed to have gone very still, so Dylan said, “He already gets hurt enough during the season.”

“I didn’t say anything about _hurting_ him,” Mitch said, which Dylan actually had realized, but he could feel the need to snipe back just on principle. 

But before he could, Connor said, “No. Like, I mean. I want it. Obviously.”

It hadn’t seemed particularly obvious to Dylan. Connor being _obvious_ was last night, when they were all watching TV, Dylan resting his head on Connor’s lap, and Connor had gotten hard and started fucking Dylan’s ear with his boner, basically.

“You guys can just--” Connor trailed off, and then flapped his hand in the air, like, _whatever_. “I just don’t want to have to decide anything.”

Mitch came over and sat beside Connor on the couch. Well, technically he sat in between Connor and Dylan, but it was clear who he was there for. 

“ _See_?” Mitch said, but then he ignored Dylan’s eye roll to nuzzle his face into Connor’s neck. “You want us to slap your ass until it’s all red, and hot, and sore.”

Connor’s eyes were closed and his face looked kind of objectively stupid: his mouth dropping open, expression somehow both blank and wanting at the same time. He was flushed, which made his hair look especially gingery. It was like a trick that Dylan could play with his eyes, seeing Connor for how he actually looked and then losing any semblance of objectivity when Connor went back to being _Connor_ , who Dylan, like, _liked_. His pink mouth, making Dylan’s sex brain go sharp and hungry. The cut of his shoulders beneath his soft t-shirt. The way he smelled. 

The fact that he was trying to grind against Mitch, while Mitch sat beside him, taking breaks from telling him how they were going to spank his ass raw to bite at his neck. 

Mitch wasn’t _good_ at dirty talk, but he did it a lot and it was hot almost in spite of the various ways that Mitch was _Mitch_. Dylan felt like a dick every time he tried to say something dirty; his voice was always so loud and flat and like, just his stupid voice. Just his normal, stupid voice that was being used to say things that his voice really had no business saying. Mitch sounded stupid too, probably. If they weren’t already so hot for him, he would probably sound really dumb. But somehow he had them all wrapped around his finger.

He was about to have Connor’s mouth wrapped around his cock, judging from the way Connor was sliding off the couch and onto the floor between Mitch’s legs. _Unreasonable_ , thought Dylan and his dick, who were also sitting right there. That was maybe one reason to put more effort into talking dirty, since it did seem to lead to a lot of blowjobs. 

Dylan eased himself onto the floor as well, going to sit behind Connor. He pressed his face between Connor’s shoulder blades, his legs splayed awkwardly on the floor as he pressed himself up behind Connor. It wasn’t a good angle to watch Connor give head, but it was really easy to jerk him off like this, once he’d won the battle against the fly of Connor’s skinny jeans and managed to get his cock pulled out. 

One of his buddies had said this was the key to using your fingers on a girl -- get behind her because then the angle wasn’t so awkward and it was easier to be gentle. The same was true enough for guys, although Dylan had never had an experience sleeping with a guy where making his hand more _gentle_ on his cock was something that factored in any way. The angle was better though, and he could work into the rhythm that Connor liked with no trouble at all. 

He knew what Connor liked from watching him jerk off over skype a million times, and from that day that they’d stayed the whole day in bed, playing _yes, yes, no_ , which was a game Dylan suspected Mitch had made up on the spot. The way it worked was that they took turns doing things to each other, and if the person liked it, he said yes, and if he didn’t like it, he said no. That was the whole game. 

Connor had said yes to everything, except when Dylan had run tickly fingers over the sole of his foot, which had really been a joke anyway. But other than that, he’s said yes when Dylan had played with his balls, his nipples. When Dylan bit across the meat of his shoulders. He even said yes when Dylan stuck his tongue inside Connor’s ear, which Dylan had thought would be gross enough to get a no.

“Really?” Dylan had asked, skeptically, when Connor groaned out another, _Yes_. He had done it again, pushing the whole wet tip of his tongue inside Connor’s ear. 

Connor had shivered so hard that his voice cracked mid-moan. “Yes,” Connor had said. “Sorry.”

Dylan had thought he was probably being a bit too agreeable about the whole thing, but then the next time Mitch was fucking him, he’d put his tongue in Dylan’s ear, and, okay, maybe it did feel kind of good. Dylan had moaned loudly. Even though the lingering rational part of his brain didn’t like the way Mitch’s tongue was blocking out his hearing, his needy sex brain was just all, _tongue, tongue, fuck me, oh please_ , and then his mouth started doing that thing where he chanted for Mitch to go, “Harder, harder, _please_ ,” even though Mitch had chirped him at least three times for how it made him sound like a porn star. 

Mitch was one to talk about sounding like a porn star, the way he was carrying on now as Connor sucked his cock. Dylan kept one hand on Connor’s cock, jerking him off slow enough that he didn’t lose the rhythm as Connor moved, working his mouth up and down the length of Mitch’s cock. Dylan reached for Mitch’s foot with his free hand, running his thumb over the high arch. It was fine to do, because Mitch wasn’t ticklish like Connor. The skin there was smooth, missing the calluses that built up on his heels and toes. The softest place on Mitch’s body was three-way tied between the inside of his lower lip, the tip of his earlobes, and the head of his cock, but this one spot on his foot was almost soft enough to be a contender. 

That was what happiness was, apparently. Holding your jackass boy… friend, sex partner, condo-sharing buddy’s foot while your other special friend gave him a blowjob. No one was even touching Dylan and still he was so happy to be here. 

It was going to suck when Connor realized how long he’d been sleeping over for and they had to have the You Were Never Invited to Move In With Me talk. Dylan kind of loved the feeling of living together. Like the night before, when he had woken before sunrise and rolled over to find Connor awake as well, all warm and quick to wrap his arms around Dylan until Dylan fell back to sleep. But it was just pretend until Connor called him out on it. 

At least for right now, they were all together, and they were going to be together after Connor got Mitch off -- which was going to be soon, based on the way Mitch had lost any semblance of being able to put a complete sentence together and was just carrying on with this stream of nonsensical vowel noises. They’d be together after Connor got off, which would be any time Dylan wanted him to, really. He had been keeping his grip on this side of too loose, but he knew exactly how to jerk Connor off if he wanted to get him to come in under three minutes. They’d all be together after Dylan got off, which would presumably happen at some point, otherwise literally what was the point of having endless threesomes?

They’d do the sex stuff and they’d all still be together afterwards, because it was sort of like this was their home, even though in actuality it was just Connor’s home and they were kind of just here to keep McJesus company until he went to training camp.

Connor did _not_ like being called McJesus, so that was one of several reasons why Dylan was not going to mention it to him. 

Instead, he tightened his hand a little, still not enough to get Connor off, and licked at the back of his neck even though it had been too long since Connor had gotten a haircut and the shaved part at the nape of his neck had grown in enough to scratch at Dylan’s tongue. 

Dylan couldn’t see much of anything at this point, since he had his face pressed to the back of Connor’s neck, but he could feel the movement of Connor working over Mitch’s cock, could hear the wet noises, the rough way Mitch was panting. The head of Connor’s cock was slippery when Dylan rubbed his finger over it. It was like some crazy hot jerk off fantasy that Dylan had stumbled into -- and actually got to be involved in, which was maybe the biggest shock of all -- and yet somehow the part he was stuck on was how nice it was to know that they were still all going to sleep together tonight. 

Because it was going to end, but it wasn’t going to end _yet_ , and Dylan was really glad about that.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with a [helpful primer](http://disarmd.tumblr.com/post/166453757215/hey-guys-so-i-wrote-a-story-and-since-some-of) (well, “helpful”) for my nice non-hockey friends who want to give this a try.

“So we should figure out, like, what we want to do with Connor or whatever,” Mitch said. They were sitting on Connor’s couch, their dinner plates on the coffee table in front of them. Dylan wanted to remember to clear them before Connor got back from whatever Hockey Savior of Canada marketing thing he was at, but he was also really terrible at remembering to clean up after himself. He could have done it right then, but he looked at Mitch instead. 

“You’re not dirty talking me into giving you a blowjob,” Dylan said. 

“I didn’t even say anything about us having sex,” Mitch said. “God.”

“Okay, fine, I’m just being clear.”

“Maybe I don’t even need to include you in the plan,” Mitch said. “I’ll wait until you’re gone for dinner with your parents, and I’ll bend Connor over, what, I don’t know, this couch I guess. That seems poetic.”

“You’re not allowed to spank Connor when I’m not home,” Dylan said. “New rule.”

“What if he asks for it?” Mitch said. He had this really stretchy face that never stopped changing expressions. Every time they took a selfie together, Dylan looked like he was happily settling into his new home in a coffin, six feet underground, and Mitch looked like a cartoon character. Right now, his cheeks were, like. Not flushed, but pink. He looked happy, which of course he did because his favourite thing in the world was trolling Dylan. But also he looked genuinely happy, in a sweet way. 

“No,” Dylan said. He’d actually forgotten what Mitch had said, but it seemed safe to go with his default answer. Mitch’s mouth was really wide, and he was smiling like he knew exactly where Dylan’s attention was focused. 

“Do you want to spank Connor, too?” Mitch asked. Mitch laughed a million times a day, but of course he was able to say that with a straight face. 

Dylan couldn’t hold back a quick, nervous, giggly noise, reaching behind himself to fix the throw pillow while he stalled for time. 

The thing about doing kinky things was that they didn’t really _feel_ that kinky at the time, usually. Like Dylan had wore all of his ex-girlfriend’s clothes once, including her panties and bra, and it hadn’t really felt like much at the time, just kind of a funny thing to do, but then way afterward, one night when he was at a party, someone said something about crossdressing and he realized that he had done that. Technically, that’s what he’d done. But it hadn’t felt like that at the time. Things usually felt normal to do and excruciating to talk about. 

Except, maybe, the first time he got fucked up the ass, which had been pretty easy to talk about (“I guess one of you can fuck me tonight,” he’d said over breakfast, and then they’d played rock, paper, scissors over it), but then actually felt like a massive fucking deal. Like Mitch could have _hurt_ him. Dylan kept freaking out a bit, even though it hadn’t _actually_ hurt, because the possibility was there.

He’d felt bad then, thinking about how they’d both taken a turn fucking Connor earlier that weekend, and had been compelled to make sure that Connor was actually alright, even while Mitch was still in the middle of trying to fit his dick into Dylan’s ass. 

“But were you okay though?” he had asked Connor while the head of Mitch’s dick inched in just past the first ring of muscles. 

“Do you want to stop?” Connor had asked, giving Mitch a warning look. 

“It must have been so much,” Dylan had said. “I didn’t think…maybe it was too much.”

“Is it too much for you right now?” Connor had asked.

“I don’t know,” Dylan had said, and he hadn’t. Half of him wanted Mitch to just hurry up, and the other half wanted him to stop immediately and never try again. It had felt like they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. He didn’t think they should ever both fuck Connor in the same night again. 

“How about we just do this for a second.” Connor had shooed Mitch away and settled in between Dylan’s legs, sucking his cock. He got two fingers in Dylan’s ass without much fanfare, spent a lot of time working him up to three, until he could pull his fingers out of Dylan’s ass and then just push them right back in again because Dylan was _open_. 

“Okay,” Dylan had started chanting then, thrashing his head side to side. “Okay.”

It turned out he did like getting fucked, then and every time they tried again afterward, he just needed a super lot of warm up first. 

He thought that spanking Connor was probably going to be like the accidental crossdressing thing, and not the first time assfucking situation. He was happy that Mitch had given them the chance to actually talk about it, but as a principle, he genuinely hated having to talk things out. 

“Have you done that before?” Dylan asked.

“I mean. You know how it’s like pretty normal to slap someone on the ass, like just like whenever. And sometimes during sex.”

“Sure,” Dylan said, not because he had ever slapped someone on the ass during sex, but because Mitch did it to both Dylan and Connor all the time. Like to say good job or try to get one of them to hurry up, or sometimes, it seemed, to celebrate his own sexual prowess, which was the worst part of having sex with him. Even though his prowess was, technically speaking, pretty worthy of celebration. “I’ve obviously had sex with you before.”

“But then it’s like, that’s not a spanking,” Mitch said. 

“Yeah,” Dylan said.

“So, that.”

Dylan gave the ceiling a considering look. “So you’re saying you haven’t,” he said, parsing Mitch-speak.

“Not like seriously,” Mitch said. 

“I feel like it’s probably going to be fine,” Dylan said. “Like just to stop chirping you for a quick minute before we get back to normal, but you’re pretty good at sex, overall, in spite of all the ways that it seems like your personality would get in the way. You’ll probably do a pretty good job.”

“Don’t you want to spank him too?” Mitch said, ignoring that Dylan had said anything nice about him, which was good, because that would have made it awkward. 

“Wouldn’t that be a bit much?” Dylan asked. 

“That’s why I’m bringing it up. I was thinking we could take turns.” 

“Well. Yeah. That would be good.” Dylan was already hard, but it had gone from that place where it was like, hard, whatever, it would go away, to actual achy arousal.

He was about to push Mitch back on the couch and climb on top of him, when Mitch said: “Okay but you can’t tickle him or whatever. He hates that.”

“I literally tickled him _one time_ ,” Dylan said. “And it was very obviously a joke.”

“No, ‘cause you’re always trying to touch that spot under his ass.”

“I’m not _tickling_.”

“He’s ticklish there.”

“I’m not going to stop in the middle of spanking Davo and be like, aha, the tickle monster is in town!”

“No, I mean…” Mitch trailed off. He leaned forward, and moved his fork from where it was resting on the edge of the plate to lie it down in the center of the plate, proper. “You’re good at sex too or whatever. I didn’t mean that you weren’t. I just thought, like. We should do it in a way that he’ll like it, you know?”

Dylan bit back on his initial comeback, because he did know what Mitch meant, if he was being honest instead of funny. 

“Like it’s not a punishment,” Dylan said, “it’s because he likes it.”

“Yes,” Mitch said, so effusively that Dylan couldn’t hold back a smile. “ _That’s_ what I meant. Thank you.”

“Maybe, though. He could still, um. Wait to come. A bit,” Dylan said, inspecting the weave of his jeans where they stretched over his knees, hiding his face from Mitch while trying not to be obvious about it.

“You fucking liked that,” Mitch said. It was 10% annoying, but redeemable because of the way Mitch’s voice had gotten rough all of a sudden, like a little raw, a little deeper. It wasn’t the way his voice sounded when he was chirping.

“Well, it was fucking hot,” Dylan said. He lifted his head finally, looked over at Mitch. One of Mitch’s hands was fisted, and he was rocking his knuckles back and forth over his thigh. He was hard in his jeans, and if he looked over he’d see that Dylan was too.

“I’ve never seen him come like that before,” Mitch said.

“Yeah.”

“I think he’ll like this too.”

“That’s how we’re going to do it, right?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. They were looking at each other now, and then they moved, almost in unison. Mitch’s hand slid high up Dylan’s thigh, pulling like he wanted Dylan to slide closer on the couch, but Dylan was already moving over. His own hand was cupped over the back of Mitch’s neck, holding him steady as he leaned in for a kiss. Mitch’s mouth opened right away, and it was a lot of tongue and teeth, dirty fucking kissing.

Mitch pulled away, flushed already. He said, “I could, um, spank him, and you could be playing with his dick, and, like.” He kept clutching at Dylan’s thigh, the tips of his fingers digging in and then relaxing, digging in again. 

“Do you think he’d be quiet, or like.” Dylan’s dick was leaking now, and when it twitched, Dylan could feel it smearing against the cotton of his boxers. 

“And then we could get him to--”

“To?” Dylan prompted. 

“Suck my dick,” Mitch said.

Dylan swallowed. “Yeah.”

“No, you, suck my dick,” Mitch said. “Now. Get on your knees.”

“I fucking said I wasn’t going to do this,” Dylan said, but he was already sliding off the couch.

“Can you just, can you just, you know how you, I’m really, fuck,” Mitch said, all coherence lost as Dylan started sucking him. He actually knew what Mitch meant though. Mitch liked this really tight suction over the head of his cock, a quick hand working the rest of the length. He came quickly from getting head when he was getting it the way he liked it, whereas Dylan always took a bit longer no matter how good the other person was sucking him. But then Dylan was way more likely to come in three seconds flat after getting in someone’s ass, and Mitch was better at holding out there, so whatever. They were both useless, was the main point. But Dylan knew how Mitch wanted to be sucked off.

Mitch groaned when he came, the sound deep and loud. Dylan swallowed because there was nothing around for him to spit into. When they had spent a few nights at the Kawarthas and Dylan sucked Connor off on the dock, he could just spit right into the lake. That had been the best. After Mitch fucked him raw and he had come leaking out of his ass, another jump into the lake. Hopefully sperm didn’t affect wildlife because they had basically filled the lake with jizz. 

As Dylan swallowed Mitch’s come, he thought that they should try to get up to cottage country again before the summer was over. He scraped his tongue over his top molars to try to get rid of the jizz taste. 

“If you wait until I get hard again, you can fuck me,” Mitch said, wiping at his forehead with the back of his wrist.

Mitch basically had the shortest refractory period known to man, so that got a strong yes from Dylan.

They moved to the bedroom while Mitch’s dick was getting a breather. There was a glass of water on one of the bedside tables, and Dylan drank from it even though he couldn’t remember how long it had been there for. The cleaners came twice a week during the off-season, so it couldn’t be that old. 

Connor paid for the cleaners, just like he paid for everything else. Dylan had figured that out three weeks ago, when he saw Connor writing a cheque, like an actual paper cheque from a cheque book that had a plain black leather cover, same as Dylan remembering his parents’ having when he was growing up. 

“No one wants to go to the bank,” Dylan had said. “Just do an e-transfer.” 

“They want it like this,” Connor had said, letting Dylan drape himself against Connor’s back to peer over his shoulder and see who the cheque was being made out to. 

It was dumb, but before that moment Dylan hadn’t considered that there were things that Connor would have to write cheques for. That this was his condo and he was paying for _everything_ and Dylan was just living here. Dylan paid for things sometimes, he was sure he did, although it had ended up being harder to come up with an example than he would have expected. He’d paid when they had a cheat meal at Pizzeria Libretto, and at one of their trips to the LCBO… maybe not the last one, but at some point in the summer, they’d gone to restock the bar and bought so many bottles that the clerk had packed them up in a wine box because it turned out that two-sixes were the same size as wine bottles. 

That wasn’t enough stuff to have paid for though. He wanted to bring it up to Connor, but he thought he should talk about it with Mitch first. Partly because it seemed polite, like he and Mitch were both living here and giving Connor money was a good plan, so probably Mitch would want to be involved in it. But then mostly it was because he was a chickenshit, and it seemed less likely that Connor would kick him out for moving in uninvited if both him and Mitch were all casual, like, hey, here’s some money for all your shit. 

Mitch had collapsed face first in the bed, and his breathing was super loud because his face was smothered in the blankets, but also maybe because he was sleeping. Dylan touched his shoulder, gently, to see what he would do. His breathing stayed steady, so he was probably awake. Dylan stroked along his shoulder blade, just light touches with the tips of his fingers. Mitch’s breathing didn’t change at all, but his skin broke out in goosebumps. Dylan liked that. Mitch could control a lot -- hold himself still, keep his breathing even and steady, but there were still ways that Dylan could touch him that his body couldn’t help but respond to. 

Dylan rolled closer. He kissed Mitch’s shoulder. Mitch was shirtless a lot, but he still had a little bit of a t-shirt tan line where the back of his neck was darker than his shoulders. Dylan pressed his cheek to Mitch’s spine because he liked the feel of his skin. 

He did want to talk about the money thing while they had a quiet moment to themselves, so he lifted his head again.

He said, “Hey,” keeping his voice quiet enough that it didn’t interrupt the closeness between them. 

Mitch made a sound in response. 

Dylan started saying, “I was--” but Mitch made another sound, and this time he also arched his back. He gave a little twist until his ass was pushed up against Dylan’s cock, which immediately went from hard but chill to hard and _ready_. 

“Okay, but do you think--” He cut himself off that time, biting back a gasp when their bodies lined up just right. 

“Put on lube and fuck me like this,” Mitch mumbled. 

“Like…” Dylan trailed off, already reaching for the lube. He covered his cock with lube, then rubbed at Mitch’s hole and crack until he was shiny wet. 

“Okay?” Dylan said, holding himself over Mitch, his cock rubbing between Mitch’s ass cheeks. 

“Yeah, do it,” Mitch said, and then they started the epically slow process of easing Dylan’s cock into Mitch’s unstretched ass. He was tight. Dylan really wanted to come. Mitch’s ass would open a little and then clamp down even tighter than before, letting Dylan’s cock in only a centimeter at a time. 

“Okay?” Dylan asked again when Mitch had been silent for a long minute.

“I’m concentrating,” Mitch said, voice tight but not pained. 

They never worked up to proper fucking, like balls slapping, headboard rocking, hard and steady _fucking_. Instead, Dylan rode the rhythm of Mitch clenching and unclenching, just barely grinding into the overwhelming tightness. Mitch’s fingers were twisted in the sheets, so Dylan covered his hand. Mitch spread his fingers enough for Dylan to slot their fingers together, sort of holding hands except they weren’t palm to palm. 

It was the hot side of all of the annoying parts of Mitch’s personality. How full on he was. The way he couldn’t help but rile Dylan up. His insistence that every single thing had to be _extra_ extra. 

It made Dylan want to push harder, fuck him deeper, see how much Mitch could actually take. Push everything he was feeling right back at Mitch because what else was he supposed to do with it? 

Dylan anchored himself with the hand he was holding Mitch’s with, and used his free hand to reach down. 

“Up,” he said, when he couldn’t get between Mitch’s body and the mattress. 

They both had to move before Mitch could get his knees beneath him enough to arch up and make space for Dylan to give him a reach around. The change in position also had the bonus of making his ass easier to fuck. 

It got really intense there at the end, Dylan giving it to Mitch hard enough that he couldn’t coordinate his hand enough to actually stroke Mitch’s cock. Mitch was leaking and his cock was slippery even though Dylan hadn’t used any extra lube. It was difficult to keep hold of him, so he had to keep his hand really tight around Mitch’s cock. Tight and still except for the movement of his fucking knocking Mitch, or the way Mitch was squirming around. Dylan lost his grip on Mitch’s cock when Mitch started writhing, but when he got his hand on it again and felt how fucking wet Mitch was, he realized that it had happened because Mitch had come and thank fuck for that because now Dylan could too. 

Dylan’s body went all caveman when he came, fucking Mitch rough, no rhythm. He covered Mitch’s whole body, holding him down on the bed, coming deep in his ass. His brain shut off, and it took a long time afterwards before his body stopped tingling and he remembered that he needed to remove his now-soft dick from Mitch’s ass. 

When he rolled off Mitch’s prone body and onto the mattress, Mitch made a great gasping sound, flipped onto his back, and said, cheerfully, “I couldn’t breathe.”

“Should have asked me to move,” Dylan said, but Mitch just gave him a flushed and sweaty smile. 

Connor came home not long after that. He looked beyond exhausted, but he just shrugged when Dylan asked if he was okay. He made them change the sheets before they were allowed to go to sleep, even though Dylan really didn’t want to move.

“Tomorrow,” he tried, but Connor said, “They’re soaked.”

“Not _soaked_ ,” Dylan grumped, rubbing his hand over a smear, which, okay, was pretty wet. 

“Most of that leaked out of my ass,” offered Mitch. 

“Fucking… take him to the shower,” Dylan said to Connor. “I’ll do this.”

“It’s not my fault you fucked buckets of come up my ass,” Mitch said, but he sounded so sweet and sleepy that Dylan couldn’t come up with a retort. 

“It might be a problem with his prostate,” Mitch continued as Connor lead him into the bathroom. “Like maybe it’s hyperactive.”

The shower turned on, but they didn’t close the door, so Dylan could still hear it when Connor said, “Maybe he’s just really hot for you.”

Dylan made himself stop grinning at the empty room and went to Connor’s linen closet, which was just a shelf in his normal closet because they really did not have enough storage space. He put the sheets right into the washing machine, remade the bed, and still had enough time to lean against the towel rack and watch Connor rub his soapy hands all over Mitch’s ass. It was always a good ass, but wow it looked especially good with Connor’s strong hands rubbing suds into the crack. 

Dylan wished he had his phone, but a picture still wouldn’t be able to capture everything -- the bland soapy smell of the Dove bar Connor was using. The way the room was slowly filling with steam. The sound of the rainfall shower hitting the ceramic tiles. Connor’s bathroom was disproportionately big compared to the rest of his condo. Half a hockey team could fit into his shower, or at least the entire starting lineup. 

There was more than enough room for Dylan. 

Connor was hard. Dylan could have gone again, but there was something about how fucked out Mitch was looking that made Dylan want to push him a little more. Dylan said, “I bet you’re too tired to suck Connor now,” which was, okay, a shameless exploitation of how well he knew Mitch, but whatever. Mitch went to his knees immediately. Dylan really, really, really enjoyed the view. 

He washed his hair while Mitch sucked Connor’s dick, even though Mitch paused briefly to complain that Dylan was having a shower in the middle of sex, even though literally they were in the shower and it was already a huge waste of water so a lot of people would have thought Dylan was being a hero. 

Connor squirmed really nicely against the tiled shower wall, his dick bobbing centimetres from Mitch’s face.

“Do you need me to take over or what?” Dylan asked, reaching for the mostly-full bottle of conditioner that none of them used regularly, just to be a dick. 

Mitch went back to it after that, but when Connor came, he held it in his mouth, stood up, backed Dylan against the shower wall and slowly fed him the mouthful of Connor’s come. It was fucking messy. Dylan couldn’t tell what was water on his face and what was come, everything was so hot and wet and slippery. He was hard again. That was the problem with doing it with all three of them. They would end up in these cycles where they rotated around, gave each other enough time to cool off and then get ready to go again. Someone was always hard. They could just keep having sex indefinitely. 

“Back down,” Dylan said, shoving at Mitch’s shoulder. Mitch huffed, but he went. Dylan wondered if Mitch was going to feed Dylan back his own come as well, but whatever, it would be worth it. He spread his legs a little, planting his feet. Leaned back against the wall, head tilted until he could reach Connor’s mouth. Connor’s mouth on his, Mitch’s mouth on his dick. This shower and their bedroom -- or, it was Connor’s bedroom, but they’d all be sleeping there tonight. Dylan tried to lock in every sensory detail because he knew one day he’d be old and boring and thinking back on his glory days, and probably that would be the NHL ( _eventually_ ), but also it would be this. This moment, the shower, his boys. 

He pulled back to gasp. Looked down at Mitch’s bobbing head, over at Connor whose hair was dark, almost brown, when it was wet. He was thinking some pretty embarrassing things, so he caught Connor’s mouth again and kept his tongue busy so that he wouldn’t be tempted to say any of them.


	3. Part Three

Before all this started, if someone had asked Dylan how he thought it would feel to walk in on two people he was attracted to making out with each other, he would have probably said he’d feel like, oh, damn, shafted. Like if they wanted each other, there was obviously no way that they would also want him.

But, somehow, in the actual moment of seeing two people that he was very much attracted to making out with each other, he just felt like. Yeah. There were his boys. What a freaking awesome thing to come home to. 

Dylan threw his jacket over the back of one of the stools at the breakfast bar, and went to perch on the edge of the coffee table. Mitch and Connor had pulled apart, so Dylan swooped in to give them each a quick peck, but then he said, “Keep going.” He actually thought there was a chance that he liked watching them kiss more than he liked kissing them himself. Like he _liked_ kissing, especially those two quick kisses just then, because his mouth was all normal and dry or like just regular homeostasis from going about his day, but both Mitch and Connor had fucking _wet_ mouths, because they must have been making out for a long time. It was like getting to come home and skip right over all the prep and just go right in to fuck someone who had already been opened up, which, actually, _great idea_ , Dylan was totally going to see if either of them would be down for that. 

For right now, what it actually was, was getting to kiss two people who each kissed him back like they were fucking aching for it, and Dylan could still feel the phantom touch of both of their mouths on his even as he sat back and watched them start kissing each other again.

The thing about watching them kiss each other was that it was really ridiculously hot. Dylan knew he was probably like okay at kissing, better at blowjobs, maybe even the best at cunnilingus, even though he was obviously pretty out of practice these days. But Connor and Mitch were really good at kissing, and really _really_ good at kissing each other. 

Dylan thought about telling them how good they looked, but he didn’t want to distract them. Connor was fucking his tongue into Mitch’s mouth, while Mitch’s fingertips were trying to find the bare skin beneath the waistbands of Connor’s jeans and boxers. Mitch couldn’t quite manage it, so he pulled his hands back and just grabbed Connor’s ass through his clothes. Connor pressed into his hands. 

They shifted on the couch. Mitch fell backward and hauled Connor with him. They looked like they were going to fall right off the couch, but managed to navigate the narrow space. Mitch’s hands stayed on Connor’s ass the whole time. Connor broke the kiss for a moment and reached between their bodies. Dylan couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but all the sudden it was a lot easier for Mitch to slide his hands beneath Connor’s jeans, so he must have undone his fly. He rocked against Mitch’s thigh. Maybe his cock was out, too. Fuck that was hot. 

Connor dropped his head and whispered something that Dylan couldn’t quite make out. He could see the way Mitch’s hands flexed in response, kneading at Connor’s ass. 

Mitch let go just long enough to push Connor’s jeans and boxers down as far as he could reach and then his hands were right back on Connor’s ass again. Connor was still wearing his t-shirt, and his jeans were covering everything except his ass, which looked exceptionally round in Mitch’s hands. 

“Connor wants a spanking,” Mitch said. “Like we talked about. You wanna stop watching or what?”

“I’m still wearing my shoes,” Dylan said, stupidly. 

“Why didn’t you take them off at the door?” Mitch asked.

“Why’s the fucking shoe rack in the bedroom then?” 

“Take them off and carry them.”

“If that’s such a great idea, why are there three hundred pairs of your shoes in front of the door?”

Before Mitch could respond, Connor started to move. Mitch stopped at that, put his hands on Connor’s hips, and held him still. 

“Just take off your fucking shoes already,” Mitch said to Dylan, and then to Connor, “Sorry, sorry.”

“No, it’s--” Connor pushed away Mitch’s hands, and stood up. “You won’t be able to spank me like that.” He walked around to the side of the couch, pushed the side table out of the way, and bent over the arm of the couch. 

Mitch gaped, then span around, mouth open, to give Dylan a look. 

_I know_ ,” Dylan mouthed. 

Mitch twisted up one side of his face. _I’m dying_. 

_Be normal_. Dylan flapped his wrist, and Mitch flapped back at him but then he turned back around and shuffled close enough that he could touch Connor. 

“You look fucking hot, Davo,” Mitch said. He put his hand on Connor’s tailbone, reached down to grab his ass, then up again to rub at his lower back. He look over at Dylan and raised his eyebrows, like, _now?_

Dylan shrugged. Then changed his mind and nodded firmly instead. 

The first hit sounded pretty loud but Dylan didn’t think it was that hard. Just like _slap_ , like you’d get a guy with a coiled wet towel and it would sting but it wasn’t going to bruise or anything. Connor didn’t say anything, just rocked his weight a little with his feet still firmly on the ground. Mitch kept hitting him. 

Dylan was obsessed with the way Connor’s skin rippled. His ass was rock hard, so it didn’t jiggle (which was the thing Dylan missed the most about sleeping with girls, who were usually so much softer, and bouncier, jigglier, whatever, than hockey players), but it did ripple with the impact of Mitch’s hand and that was pretty freaking great. Like really great, Dylan wanted to get his face right in there so he could see it closer. 

“Do you want a turn?” Mitch said, only a little snide, when Dylan had wandered so close that he was getting in the way of Mitch’s swinging arm. 

“K,” Dylan said, trading spots with Mitch. And then he slapped Connor’s ass.

The weirdest part of spanking Connor was that Dylan’s hand got this weird ticklish, buzzing kind of hurt each time he brought it down on Connor’s ass, what the fuck? 

Dylan bent his fingers in to press at his buzzing palm, and glanced over at Mitch, who was staring at them, mouth gaping. 

Dylan dragged his eyes from Mitch to Connor’s ass and back again, asking wordlessly if Mitch wanted another turn. Mitch started nodding, then seemed to remember that his mouth was still open, and snapped his jaws together with a little click. 

Dylan took a few more swings at Connor’s ass before he stepped away, alternating hard and soft spanks, and then one really hard one to see what Connor would do. Kind of nothing, was the answer, except that he made noises without actually making noise. Like it was all in his breathing and the small ways his body shifted around and _fuck_. But anyway, it was Mitch’s turn, so Dylan stepped back. 

Mitch didn’t say anything while he spanked Connor. The room was quiet except for the obscenely loud slaps of Mitch’s hand coming down on Connor’s ass. Dylan thought that someone should probably say something, because he was getting to the phase of being so turned on that his head was spinning. It was like when he was younger and he found a moment in whatever porn he was watching that was so incredible he had to pause it.

“You good?” Dylan asked. His voice sounded hard, which was weird and not representative of the way he felt (dizzy, awed, so turned on that his joints felt slippery). 

Mitch stopped for a sec, but started up again when Connor gave a quick, affirmative, “Good.” He was hitting Connor pretty hard, although not as hard as Dylan did that one time. He was keeping a rhythm, not just trying things out like Dylan had been. Connor made another sound, like he was trying to say _Yeah_ but had run out of breath after the first y-sound. He grabbed at the edge of the couch cushion, and rocked up in this impossibly slow arch of obvious pleasure that seemed to wash across his body like a wave. 

The next smack of Mitch’s hand knocked into him hard enough to jar his whole body. Connor wasn’t being noisy, but it seemed like the weight of Mitch’s hand pushed the air from his lungs in low huffs. Dylan could see that his dick was still hard. 

“Me,” Dylan said, coming up behind Mitch to nudge him away, while still staying out of reach of Mitch’s swinging arm. Mitch gave Connor one last slap and then let Dylan switch places with him. 

Dylan had seen how Connor responded when Mitch kept it nice and steady, so he did that, too. He hit Connor over and over again at the same pace. It would have been easy to get Connor dancing on the balls of his feet if Dylan had focused on the sensitive underside where his ass met his thighs, but he and Mitch has said they were going to keep it fun. It was fucking fun for him to give Connor a few sharp smacks across his thighs and hear the way his breath hitched, but they made Connor tighten up instead of going all loose and easy. So he stuck to the thickest part of Connor’s ass, which went fucking bright red, but seemed to make Connor the happiest. 

Mitch came up and hooked his chin over Dylan’s shoulder. It was a bit of a stretch for him, so he was pressed up snug against Dylan’s back. Dylan leaned back into him, lingered long enough to reach around and give Connor’s leaking cock a nice hard stroke, and then let Mitch have his spot again. 

This time, Dylan walked around to knee on the floor where he could see Connor’s face. He was rubbing his forehead against the couch cushion, but he twisted his head to face Dylan when Dylan knelt down. 

It was different to watch the expressions on Connor’s face instead of the reactions of his body. His mouth kept twisting, brow furling into a grimace. He’d get this blissed out look and then his mouth would do something weird, and at first Dylan thought maybe he was in more pain that they had thought, but then he realized:

“You keep smiling,” Dylan said, cupping Connor’s cheek and pushing at his bottom lip with the flat of his thumb. 

“You’re doing it really good,” Connor said. 

“You want to come?” Dylan asked. 

“When you’re done,” Connor said. He twisted his face away after that, like he didn’t want to talk anymore. He clasped his hands together and pulled his elbows closer so that he could press his face into his own forearms. 

Dylan raked his fingers through Connor’s hair and stood again. Mitch moved without being asked so that Dylan could have another turn. Before he could go too far, Dylan looked at him and moved his hand through the air in the universal _jerk off_ sign, cutting his eyes down to Connor. He could have said it out loud, but it was fun to coordinate this stuff without Connor knowing they were doing it. 

Mitch grinned widely. It took a little coordinating to find room for them to both stand close enough to Connor without getting in each other’s way, but they figured it out. Mitch waited until Dylan had started spanking Connor again before he grabbed Connor’s cock, and the first touch of his hand made Connor jolt like he’d been stuck with a livewire. Everything about his body was so expressive even though he was objectively doing very little. When he was hit hard, he’d gasp. His back arched when the rhythm was how he liked it. And, when he was close to coming, he stopped breathing. Just little things that he probably didn’t even realize he was doing, but it was like constant feedback and Dylan loved it. 

They timed their turns to Connor’s breathing. One of them spanked Connor while the other jerked him until he was about to go off, and then they’d trade what they were doing. It was crazy how long they could spank him for. Like one puck to the thigh and you were black and blue for weeks, but they could slap away at Connor’s ass for ages and it barely seemed like it was going to bruise. When the red started to edge into little mottled purple spots, Dylan had another wordless conversation with Mitch like, _Now_ and Mitch nodded, _Now_. Mitch gave a sideways jerk of his head like, _You wanna jerk him off?_ but Dylan liked the spanking part way more than he’d realized he would, so he mouthed, _In a minute_ , and stayed there, smacking Connor slow and steady and kind of hard while Mitch worked his hand over Connor’s cock. 

Even though they were pretty easy with the rhythm, it felt like the build was _massive_. Dylan’s hand went raw and then numb. His cock was so wet in his boxers that it was almost like he’d come except that he was basically harder than he’d ever been _ever_. Somehow, he still wanted Connor to come even more than he wanted to get off himself. He traded places with Mitch, finally, because he really wanted to feel it when Connor came. 

Connor got tense, and then tenser. He went from holding his breath to taking these gasping mouthfuls of air, going tense and tenser. His whole body locked up and then his cock jerked. He cried out when he came, high and helpless and loud. Dylan felt like he was _in_ it, like Connor’s orgasm had taken over the whole room, all three of them tied together. He could feel Connor’s cock going somehow, impossibly bigger in his hand, could smell his come, and, like, his body, his sweat. Dylan could smell his own sweat, could hear Mitch’s breathing -- loud, ragged. 

Connor started shaking, and Dylan realized after it was already too late that Connor’s legs were about to give out, but it was okay because Mitch already had his arms around Connor’s waist, and he got Connor down to the floor, gentle, no problem.

“Connor, can you just -- are you good?” Mitch asked. “Can you just chill there for like one second?” His hands were poised at his own zipper, but he waited until until Connor rasped out, “Yeah, ‘m good,” and slapped an uncoordinated hand in his general direction before he pulled out his cock. 

Dylan crawled over and sucked him off. He sort of wanted to get his mouth on Connor’s cock, which would be mean because Connor was clearly _done_ , so it was like, would that be a fun kind of mean? Hard to tell in advance. 

So he sucked off Mitch instead and Mitch went nuts for it, moaning all shocked and breathy like he couldn’t believe the wet heat of Dylan’s mouth. That was nice. Dylan liked to be appreciated. His head was kind of weird in a way that made him feel like he could keep having sex forever, even though objectively his cock was like, _Help me, help me, I’m so hard I might fall off._

He pulled off when Mitch started to come, got a lot of it on his mouth, which wasn’t like a facial but like spit, come, wet everywhere.

He sat up and wiped at his face. Mitch was lying on the floor, one of his legs overlapping Connor’s, both of them flushed and panting loudly. There was definitely come on the couch, also on the rug, also all over Dylan.

“This is a fucking mess,” said Dylan. “Could you really not have done this in the bedroom?”

“It all happened so fast,” Mitch said.

“You guys spent like twelve years on foreplay.”

“We were waiting for you,” Connor said, his voice soft. He was staring at the ceiling with the biggest smile on his face, wiggling his toes as he squirmed a little, like his body was coming back online one inch at a time. 

It was fucking cute. Dylan looked over at Mitch, who had clearly noticed as well. He made a face at Dylan like, _Look_ , and Dylan scrunched his nose back because he _knew_ , but it was even worst for him because Mitch also looked fucking cute sprawled out on the floor, beaming at Dylan over how cute Connor was being, and that was a circular vortex right there, which was objectively unfair since Dylan was the only one getting the full brunt of it and he hadn’t even come. 

“Stop hovering,” Mitch said. “It’s nice on the floor.” 

Dylan huffed, but stretched out between them. Connor immediately rolled over to wrap himself around Dylan, and Mitch snuggled up as well. 

Dylan groaned. “You guys are fucking killing me. Are you doing this on purpose?”

Mitch let out a big honking laugh, which meant that he had gone from come dumb to giddy in the afterglow. Dylan could feel Connor’s back shaking, like he was laughing soundlessly.

“Take your pants off then,” Mitch said, but they were in the way, so Dylan was only able to get his fly open. His cock was all about that, and sprang free through the flap of his boxers the first chance it could get. 

Connor and Mitch were both still out of it, and having two of their useless hands on his dick still did not equal one competent person jerking him off, but Dylan came anyway. The second they touched him, he was like, _going to come_ , but then they both had awkward angles and their grips weren’t right so he was like _right there_ but not actually _there_ there. For at least thirty seconds, or like one to seven years, he thought that he was never going to come again, just hang on this edge, just a breath away from falling over it but _not_. And then he thought about how they had been spanking Connor and how he’d reacted with his whole body, and what if they did it again but he got to fuck Connor, and yeah, that did it. Dylan went off and it was like fucking fireworks. 

Mitch went back online enough to be reasonably functional first. He bounced up, reached down to pull Dylan to his feet, which was kind of unfair because Dylan had come the most recently and was really not ready to stand yet. But it was the right call, because it took the two of them and some actual muscles to heave Connor up and get him all the way to the bedroom. Connor was soft and clumsy and really just wanted to be back on the floor, so he kept listing over like he was going to just slide right back down. 

He was happy when they let him drop onto the bed, although he didn’t pull it together enough to get his head up to a pillow, just starfished himself out on his belly. He carried this wordless tension with him so much of the time, and Dylan hadn’t realized how wound up he had been until now in the absence of it. Seeing him relaxed was freaking awesome, and they needed to figure out what to do so that he was like this more often. 

Mitch climbed on top of Connor, and then crawled down between his legs. “This. Ass. Is on fiiiiiii-iiiiire,” Mitch sang, rubbing his cheek all over Connor’s butt. 

“Is that helping?” Dylan asked. He stripped off his own clothes. Finally. 

“Your cheek feels like sandpaper,” Connor said, muffled by his folded arms. Then, “No, don’t stop,” when Mitch lifted his head. 

So Mitch went back to it, and that looked fun, so Dylan got up on the bed and nuzzled his way in until Mitch moved back and Dylan could rub his face across Connor’s inflamed skin. He alternated between sliding his lips, mouth open, tongue dragging, and his cheeks, chin, even the tip of his nose, testing the way Connor reacted to the different stimuli. 

It was fucking intimate, touching Connor like this. Like Connor’s body was Dylan’s, too. Dylan could just do what he wanted. He could kiss his way up from Connor’s tailbone to the deepest dip of his lower back. His skin went from hot, on his actual ass where they had spanked him, to sort of skin-warm above that. He tasted like salt, which meant that Dylan was licking his sweat. That shouldn’t have been hot, but Dylan would basically be willing to give Connor a full tongue bath at that point. Not that a tongue bath would help anything, since it would just make Connor more sticky, but like Dylan would be willing to do it. That was intimate. 

Intimacy also seemed to feel a little bit like love. But they were different, probably. Dylan didn’t know. It had been an confusing summer. He wanted to figure some stuff out, but there was a chance, or more realistically a strong likelihood, that he would end up losing what he had now, and he wanted to keep it more than anything else. He could probably just wait forever without actually bringing anything up.


	4. Part Four

Except that one day he realized he couldn’t. He had all the blowjobs he could want, but he still kept thinking about how he needed to fucking _talk_ to Connor and Mitch. He’d think about how he had to talk to them and then he’d think, fuck, he really, really, really didn’t want to talk about it. And then he’d try to distract himself by thinking about blowjobs. Or his secret fantasy that he was probably never going to bring up where he and Mitch made Connor wear a butt plug so they could fuck him a million times throughout the day without opening him up, and maybe sometimes they’d come and maybe sometimes they’d just pull out, plug him up, and take a little break before fucking him again. Thinking about _that_ was a good distraction, but he still felt like he was going to have to talk to them. About the boring shit like if they were living together, not about fucking Connor a million times.

He thought about how they needed to talk while he went around the bedroom grabbing clothes off the floor and shoving them into the washing machine. Their shit was all mixed up together. He thought about it when he went to the kitchen to get a glass of OJ. He thought about it while he took the clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer. 

He was thinking about it a lot while he carried the dry clothes from the dryer back into the bedroom because they had no fucking storage for their clothes and fuck. 

Connor came in while he was standing, arms full of clean laundry, in front of their stuffed-full dresser. 

“What’s up?” Connor asked. 

“I don’t, um.” Dylan put the clothes on top of the dresser. They had other clothes, dirty, on top of the dresser already but what the fuck ever. 

If Connor had been like, _K, bud, you do you_ , Dylan would have let it drop, but Connor sat down on the bed and looked at Dylan intently. Dylan had wanted to wait until it was all three of them, and also like maybe until the end of time, if that was an option, but like. He had to fucking say something. 

“I think,” Dylan started, but then his mind went hysterically blank. 

He forced himself to take a breath. He had this coach growing up who said, _You’ve just got to screw your courage to the sticking place_. Dylan remembered that, and it was actually helpful because at least now his brain was making words again, instead of just unhelpful static. 

“I was thinking,” Dylan tried again, “that it’s kind of like I moved in. Except I know we didn’t talk about it. Or we did talk about it, but just like that Mitch was going to find his own place. But like, it kind of feels like we moved in.” 

Dylan’s voice was getting croaky, like god, imagine if stress made him go through puberty again. 

He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “This is embarrassing.” He adjusted his stance so his weight was spread evenly across both feet. “If I have moved in, and that’s a thing that you’re cool with, I want to buy a dresser. But I don’t know if that’s, like. If you--”

“Of course I want you to move in,” Connor said. He touched Dylan’s cheek. Dylan had always hated it how actors would grab each other’s faces before they kissed, like putting your paws all over someone’s face was a decent proxy for actual passion. But in that moment, the press of Connor’s fingers to Dylan’s cheekbone felt pretty passionate. 

Guys moved in with each other all the time because they had to move to new cities and it was nice to be around your buddies and like, there was nothing that weird about them living together -- for convenience, for company, whatever. But that wasn’t why they were living together. 

They looked at each other, and Dylan thought, oh shit, is he going to say _I love you_. He sort of thought they probably all did love each other, like a bit at least. Dylan knew they were intimate as fuck, and it was hard to separate love from intimacy. 

He’d say it back, if Connor actually ....

But there was a noise, and they both looked away. Mitch was at the door, which was good, actually. He should have been there for the conversation too. Now they could finish talking about it the way they were supposed to, with all three of them. 

“We were just, like. We should talk about --”

“I’m going to bed,” Mitch interrupted. “I’m really tired.”

Dylan looked over at Connor. Connor shrugged. They followed Mitch to the bedroom. 

Mitch and Connor used the double sinks in the ensuite while Dylan went to the other bathroom. He splashed his face with cold water. He thought, _This is my bathroom too now_ , but truthfully he’d already been thinking about it as his. It was just that now, when he thought it, he didn’t immediately have to remind himself _not_ to think it. 

Connor was in the middle spot of the bed when Dylan got back. He took of his own clothes and let them fall to the ground because that was where they kept things that needed to go in the laundry. He left on his boxers, because he only slept naked after they’d already had sex. He turned on the lamp, which was one of those white long necked ones that was supposed to go in an office, not a bedroom, and then turned off the overhead light. 

“We’re going to get a dresser,” Dylan said, once he was settled in bed. “So there’s room for the clothes.”

“Oh,” Mitch said. It would have been one thing if Mitch had just not responded, because sometimes he just wasn’t paying attention, but he definitely responded. His voice was weird, but he didn’t say enough for Dylan to get a read on it. 

“IKEA tomorrow,” Connor said.

“No,” said Dylan. 

“You’re the one who wanted a dresser.”

“I’m actually a nudist now,” Dylan said. “Forget everything.”

“Just fucking order something off EQ3 or whatever,” Mitch said. 

“Okay, but there are probably a few things that we could get from IKEA. Like what if we got curtains for the other bedroom like you’re always talking about,” Connor said.

It was a reasonable point, because right now what they had was a blanket that was hung over the window using thumbtacks. Another thing they needed, then, was putty and paint. They had used an excessive amount of thumbtacks but they didn’t go that deep into the wall so the blanket had kept falling down. The more Dylan considered it, the more it seemed like leaving the blanket up might be the strongest option. Except that it drove him fucking crazy that the room was always dark; what even was the point of having a window if it was blocked all the time. Might as well live in the dirt like a mole. 

“Maybe,” Dylan said, which meant yes, even though he really, really, really didn’t want to have to go to IKEA. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get some more hangers.” They were out of hangers all the time except when laundry was absolutely dire, so most of their clothes were draped over... any flat surface, really. It would be fine if Connor would just use the thin metal hangers that came with the dry cleaning, but he had an irrational hatred of them. He refused to explain himself, but, from what Dylan could deduce, he seemed to think they could get caught in his skin like a fish hook. Except that because Connor refused to actually admit it, Dylan hadn’t been able to tell him what a nuts idea that was. 

“You need anything?” Connor asked Mitch, who seemed to be speed scrolling through instagram, refreshing, scrolling, refreshing. It was weird because he wasn’t even trying to keep his phone hidden at all, and usually what he used instagram for was stealth thirst lurking. 

Mitch grunted, and didn’t otherwise reply, but when Connor pointedly squirmed around and edged his back closer and closer, Mitch relented. He reached over to plug his phone into the charger and then wrapped himself around Connor, hiding his face in Connor’s hair and pressing his hand flat and tight to Connor’s breastbone. 

Dylan leaned forward, kissed the back of Mitch’s hand, kissed Connor on the mouth, checked to see that the alarm was set on this phone, and then turned the light out. 

Dylan spent a lot of time thinking about what was going to happen, which was sometimes helpful and sometimes not. There was visualization (helpful), obsessing (could go either way), and dwelling (rarely useful at all). In that moment, Dylan’s brain wanted to do a million things -- Mitch seemed weird and Dylan didn’t know what kind of weird it was. Dylan needed to talk to his parents, who had probably figured out some things but not everything. And then there was the usual planning about summer training camp and then prospects camp in the fall, and like, a lot of things. Always a lot of things. 

But Dylan took a breath and focused on the heat of Connor’s body, the shape of Mitch’s hand pressed against Connor’s chest until his brain when wholly, peacefully silent. This was happiness, right then. Not the anticipation of happiness, but the actual thing itself. 

\--

The next morning, he got up, ate four fried eggs while Connor was in the shower and Mitch was doing whatever it was he was doing. He’d been weird last night and he didn’t seem to wake up any more normal, but whatever. They could talk about it after they’d gotten their stuff done. 

Dylan went down, lifted for a while in the gym in Connor’s building, and then did an hour on the stationary bike. Connor had a trainer with him every single time he worked out, so he basically never used this gym, but it was pretty good. While Dylan gasped his way through the final artificially-induced hill, he tried to remember how long it had been since they had people over. Once they got some shit put away, maybe they could have a bit of a party. Not like some big thing about how they were all living together now, but it would be nice to have people over instead of going to whatever place on King Street was supposed to be popping that week. 

Back in the condo, Connor said, “We should get going so we’re not there right at lunch.”

“Yeah, just gotta shower,” Dylan said. “Tell Mitch.”

“Mitch,” Connor yelled. 

“Right in my ear,” Dylan said, and then laughed, trying half-heartedly to get away from Connor when he glomped on to Dylan and tried to get his mouth on Dylan’s ear 

They missed Mitch coming in, but when he dropped something heavy on the floor, they looked over. 

“What’s that?” Dylan said, even though now that he was paying attention, it was clear that it was Mitch’s backpack. It was clear he was looking for something, but Dylan couldn’t imagine what. Was he seriously going to bring his backpack with them to IKEA? Like maybe it was overkill, but if it would help somehow, they should all bring backpacks. 

Mitch ignored Dylan and Connor as he surveyed the room. He found what he was looking for -- his laptop charger, still plugged into the wall by the couch, grabbed it, looped it three times, and stuffed it into this backpack. 

“What are you doing?” Dylan asked. 

“I’m heading out,” Mitch said. 

“Where?”

“Like. I’m going. I stayed here way longer than I meant to, and the whole summer’s almost done. I need to … I’ve got to _go_.” Mitch looked at his backpack once he was finished talking, his hand twitching like he was thinking of grabbing it, but -- with a noticeable effort -- he forced himself to make eye contact with Dylan first instead. 

“I thought we were going for a dresser today,” Dylan said, dumbly. 

“I don’t want to get a dresser,” Mitch said. “I don’t want to go to IKEA and look at furniture and figure out how many drawers we need and if we can just use one of those bins things under Connor’s bed or if we’re going to need a third free-standing unit or any of it. We’re not setting up a home together. It’s Connor’s piece of shit condo and he’s already got a million fucking Otters t-shirts that you can wear.”

Dylan wanted to feel mad, but he just felt this massive wave of shame. His legs felt shaky, like his body wanted to drop to the ground -- _through_ the ground, even, and then he wouldn’t have to be part of this conversation any more.

“Sorry,” Mitch said, running his fingers through his hair. He had the nicest hair out of the three of them. Even when he got out of the shower and napped without letting it dry first, it still always looked kind of okay. Dylan didn’t know it was possible to feel this bad and still look at Mitch and see the person he really liked, maybe loved, definitely wanted to share a dresser with.

Mitch stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You guys should get a dresser. Dylan moved in at the beginning of the summer; it’s good you’re, like, naming it. He should obviously have his stuff here.”

“Where’s your stuff going to be?” Dylan asked. He didn’t know if his voice sounded weird or if his ears were ringing or what. 

Mitch’s face went even blanker at that, which Dylan previously would have thought was impossible, given how utterly, obnoxiously, achingly blank Mitch’s face had remained for the entire conversation. And yet, another low. A lower low. 

“I’m getting a place,” Mitch said. “We fucking talked about this.”

“Connor wants you to move in too,” Dylan said, somehow still grasping for the thread of hope that this was all some stupid misunderstanding. Like if he just said what he actually meant, there was a chance to just _stop_ all of this. 

Nothing in Mitch’s face changed, and Dylan _knew_ , but he still couldn’t stop himself from continuing: “It was. I thought. It was going to be the three of us.”

Mitch shook his head. “We’re going to be, what, all in polyamorous love like a bunch of fucking Dungeons and Dragons nerds?”

No, there it was. The lowest low. Dylan felt like there were sharpened icicles scraping up and down the inside of his ribcage. 

“You’ve played Dungeons and Dragons before,” Connor said in his quiet, modulated media voice. 

Dylan looked over at Connor for the first time. He did not look good. They had always felt like a unit, the three of them. Dylan felt worried, suddenly, on top of the sickening embarrassment. What if Mitch said something, like, _really mean_ and hurt Connor? Dylan would have to do something to look after Connor. But he also needed to look out for Mitch. He had never considered that those might be mutually exclusive goals. 

Mitch tilted his head back without moving the lower part of his jaw. It was like the top part of his head had come detached at the jaw and was falling backward. Dylan could imagine the heavy round weight of it tipping all the way back until it fell right down to the floor. It seemed like if Mitch screamed right now, it would be very loud. Then, he let his head fall forward again. 

“Yeah, Connor,” Mitch said. “I’ve fucking played Dungeons and Dragons before.”

It seemed like it was Connor’s turn to say something, but he was silent. Dylan had already said everything he could think of.

Mitch took his hands out of his pockets, but he obviously didn’t know what to do with them. He twisted his fingers into the hem of his t-shirt. 

“Anyway, sorry,” Mitch said. “I don’t know how this turned into some tense thing. I’m going to go and then you guys can start doing the stuff you actually want to do today.”

He wasn’t gone just like that, because he had to put his shoes on and grab the backpack that was still sitting in the middle of the living room. He pulled his coat out of the closet, and seemed to realize for the first time that he had forgotten to pack the rest of his jackets. Dylan could see him weighing the pros and cons of trying to collect them all now, but he must have decided not to, because then he was out the door, but his jackets were still in the closet. 

Connor had stayed in the main room while Dylan trailed after Mitch. Now that Mitch was gone, Dylan went to stand in front of Connor. The condo was small, so Connor had obviously seen everything. His arms were crossed real tight, palms tucked under his armpits. Dylan wanted to touch him, but it was very clear that he did not want to be touched. 

“He’ll have to come back for his jackets,” Dylan said. “He left them, so that means he’s planning on coming back.”

Connor looked fucking lopsided with his arms crossed like that. Dylan assumed that the doctors knew what they were doing, but ever since his collarbone was broken, Connor could look so fucking crooked when he held himself in certain ways. Dylan couldn’t imagine that anyone would let McJesus go unfixed, but he was also concerned that he was the only one who could see how obvious it was that Connor had been broken before. 

“He’s just going to buy new jackets,” Connor said. 

“No, he’s going to come back for them,” Dylan said. 

Connor held up his hand, and started counting fingers. “More than 35 assists. More than sixty points. Do you know how much he got in bonuses last year?” Connor let his hands drop to his sides. “He’s going to buy new jackets.”

It was one of those accidentally-mean things that Connor said sometimes, like here’s the reminder that everyone whose dick you’ve sucked in the past 24 hours is playing in the NHL, and you’re the only one still chilling in the O. On one hand, Dylan thought Connor didn’t know he was being mean, but on the other, much larger, hand, Dylan was pretty sure he did. 

“Well, that’s a fucking waste of money,” Dylan said. He still hadn’t showered, and he felt disgusting. “Not like Oilers money stupid, but--”

“Fuck you too,” Connor said, which wasn’t fucking fair because Dylan, with his fucking five figure salary, was earning literally like 1000x less than Connor, and that wasn’t something Connor got to be mad about. Dylan was the one who should be mad. 

But now Connor was mad, and Mitch was gone. Dylan just wanted to have a fucking shower and go buy a dresser. He missed what it was like ten minutes ago when he through that the worst part of his day would be going to IKEA. 

Although he didn’t know what they had actually been thinking, because McDavid couldn’t go to IKEA. It was the middle of the day, but IKEA was always a stampede. They wouldn’t have made it out of the car before Connor would have been swarmed, and then he’d probably just stand there signing autographs with Mitch while Dylan had to do the shopping by himself, which would have been the fucking worst. 

Well, not the actual fucking worst. Dylan walked on autopilot to the shower. He had to turn it really hot before the heat registered at all, and then he felt like he was suffocating on steam. 

The actual worst was this: standing alone in the shower, Mitch gone, and Connor mad. 

Even navigating IKEA by himself wouldn’t have been as bad as this. 

\--

Somehow, in spite of Connor’s convictions, Dylan was still quite sure that Mitch was going to come back for the jackets. 

But three nights passed and there was still no sign of Mitch. 

On the fourth day, Connor said that Dylan needed to stop spending so much time haunting the hall closet, because who did he think he was, Harry Potter? And Dylan had said that was a cupboard, not a closet, fuck off, Davo.

“He left other shit here, besides those jackets,” Connor said. 

_Well he’s not coming back for us_ , Dylan didn’t say, because fucking duh. 

\--

So it turned out that the difference between love and intimacy is that it was very easy for some people to walk away from intimacy. 

Dylan still wasn’t sure what Connor thought about if they were like in love or what. When it was the three of them, it seemed like maybe. Now that it was just him and Connor, Dylan wasn’t so sure. They hadn’t talked about it, but there had been that moment where Connor touched his cheek, plus the fact that even though it was a fucking cesspit of depression, they were both still there. But maybe that was just for now. 

Dylan knew that Connor wasn’t going to kick him out, because Connor never quit on anything. But he hated anything that he wasn’t good at, so instead of quitting, he just focused on the things he was good at. Suddenly Connor had booked three extra commercials and he was gone all day shooting. He had more meetings with his agent than he’d had in the entire rest of the summer. He was filming another fucking promo for Sportsnet. 

Dylan had kind of liked the overflowing mess of the condo, like it was full of _them_. But now he felt like he was drowning in space. He’d never considered how empty it could feel when he was the only one left.


	5. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who commented while I was posting this! You made it massively fun for me, :) Hope you like this last part.

It was fucking stupid that Mitch had left all of his jackets here. The new season would start, and Mitch would need his jackets. Plus he was using up valuable closet space that Dylan _would_ have been fine sharing, except that Mitch went and broke his fucking heart and now he didn’t want to share anything with him at all. 

Dylan thought about throwing away all of Mitch’s stuff. There were the jackets, of course, those fucking jackets. But there was also his iPad that he never used but always wanted plugged into the wall. A ton of his hockey shit, including a bunch of Leafs crap. One time, and only one time, Dylan and Connor had the, _fuck he was lucky to get drafted to the Leafs_ conversation, because whatever, you grew up and you had your new team that you were drafted to and your hometown team was just another bunch of pushy fuckers who were trying to cheat you on the faceoff, but like. Yeah. It would have been something to get to play for them. 

It was funny how that change had happened, when the blue and the white went from Dylan’s team, the one he had grown up cheering for, to _Mitch’s team_. 

Connor was gone, like Connor was always gone now. They slept together at night -- didn’t have sex or touch much, but they shared the bed. When Dylan woke up through the night, Connor was there, already awake as well, but instead of opening his arms for Dylan, he just rolled over. 

If Connor was around, he’d tell Dylan to drop it. Or he’d use his Oilers stupid-money to hire one of those reusable bins moving companies to pack Mitch’s jackets and take them over to where he was, and they’d just be done with it. 

But Connor wasn’t here. No one was here. No one could stop Dylan from loading up his car with Mitch’s jackets, plus all the other random stuff of Mitch’s that he could find. It took him three trips because he needed to have his hands free enough to lock the condo, press the elevator button, unlock and hold open the door to the underground, where they had already used some of Connor’s stupid-money to buy extra parking spaces. He had to be able to get his hand on his keys, unlock the car, get the door open… it was a lot of work. Connor’s building had more doors than any building needed to have. He hadn’t really noticed before, because usually when he was carrying big loads, there was someone there to help him. Between the three of them, they could almost always unload the car in one go. 

Dylan pressed his forehead to the sharp part of the open passenger side door and tried to stop feeling nostalgic about unloading a car. That wasn’t helping anything. 

He had to go on the 401, nearly died, like always, decided, fuck it, and went up to the 407 instead because it was worth the toll not to die. It was fine until the 407 ended, because he really was driving to the far end of the earth, and he had to drive through fricken Oshawa. Then he forgot which street to turn down because every street in Bowmanville looked the same, and other than Mitch’s parents’ house, Dylan never had any reason to come here. Not that Mississauga was great, but it was better than fucking Bowmanville, Dylan thought as he waited endlessly to make a left across four lanes of traffic after he pulled into the wrong subdivision. 

When he finally made it to Mitch’s parents’ house, he realized that he had no idea if Mitch would actually be there. He knew that’s where Mitch had been staying because he could recognize the couch from the snaps Mitch had posted to his story, but like. That was days ago. Mitch could be anywhere. Dylan hadn’t thought this through. It Mitch wasn’t home, Dylan was just going to have to live in his car. He couldn’t make the drive back and unload all Mitch’s shit back into Connor’s condo. That was the most depressing thing he could imagine. He’d just. He’d have to live in the car. He couldn’t go through all that. He’d roll up Mitch’s jackets to use for a pillow, get his food from a Tim’s drive-thru, and that would be his life now. 

Except that he was fucking bored just sitting there, because he had forgotten his phone and had nothing to do. If it didn’t work, he was still going to live in his car, but first maybe he’d just check to see if Mitch was home. 

And he was. 

He answered the door, wearing blue Roots sweatpants that definitely originally belonged to Connor. The Team Canada World Juniors t-shirt was this year’s, not last year’s, so that meant it was Dylan’s. 

“You stole our clothes,” Dylan said. 

Mitch shrugged. 

“How did you get those?”

Mitch pursed his huge, stupid, stretching mouth into a duck face. 

“That’s what you were smuggling out in your backpack,” Dylan deduced. “You stole our shit, and then were like, boom, I’m dumping you for no reason at all. And then you just left, you fucking pigeon.”

Mitch opened his mouth. 

“I know you’re not actually,” Dylan said. “But, just, like. What a fucking dick move.” He wanted to say something to make Mitch feel really bad, but all he could come up with was: “You’re a piece of shit.”

“Yeah, well.” Mitch rolled his eyes like _obviously_. 

“You bailed for no reason.”

“You were talking about being boyfriends.”

“I meant you too.”

“I know that,” Mitch said. 

“Like all three of us would be boyfriends. That’s literally all I was saying and like we already _are_ so I don’t know what your fucking problem is. If we’re going to be, like, polygamous or whatever--”

“Polyamorous,” Mitch interrupted. “Polygamous is when you get threeway married.”

Dylan blinked. If they were all going to be boyfriends, that would mean he was probably going to tell, like, some of the guys. Maybe he’d tell Ryan. Marriage was... Marriage was like then you tell the whole world.

“Holy fuck, I said it _wasn’t_ polygamy,” Mitch said. “Take a breath.”

“You take a breath,” Dylan said. He did take a quick deep inhale, but through his nose so hopefully Mitch wouldn’t notice him doing it. 

“Do you know what would be funny?” Mitch said. “If you came here to work things out but then you ended up ghosting me because I said the word ‘marriage’.”

Dylan rolled his eyes.

“It actually wouldn’t be funny at all,” Mitch said, “but you know what I mean.”

“I’m not ghosting you,” Dylan said. “You’re the one who fucking disappeared without any of your jackets.”

“I was going to come back for those,” Mitch said. 

“Because it’s a fucking waste of money,” Dylan said, wishing for the first time that he had brought Connor along for this. Validation. 

“Mostly because I hate shopping, but sure,” Mitch said. 

“Well I brought them for you, so how about that,” Dylan said. “Pretty fucking considerate. That’s fucking boyfriend material, right there, and you just peaced out like a fucking dirtbag.”

“If my mom hears you swearing that much, you’re going to be in trouble.”

“If my mom hears that you fucking dumped me, you’re going to be in even worse trouble,” Dylan said, although strictly speaking, he was more likely to be the one in trouble. His mom would not like learning that Dylan had been keeping this a secret from her.

“Look,” Mitch said, but then he had no follow-up. 

“And you’re just living with your parents like an asshole,” Dylan said. “I don’t know how this is better than staying with Connor. You’re the only one who even lives here, and now you’re just going to stay with your parents for the rest of your life?”

“I did buy a condo,” Mitch shouted. “Fuck!”

“You bought your own place?” Dylan repeated. “Why aren’t you living there?”

“Because of. Normal reasons. Fuck. Why are you here?”

Dylan opened his mouth and closed it again. He wanted to say something terrible, like, _Because I love you, you selfish piece of shit_ , but he was feeling too sad to fight. 

“I brought your jackets back,” he said instead. “They’re in the car. I’ll go get them.”

He turned around and walked outside. Mitch’s parents’ house was in typical burbs. Dylan walked down the straight driveway, lined by a tended bed of shrubs and perennials, to where his car was parked on the curb. There was no sidewalk. 

Dylan couldn’t find his keys, even though he was sure he had put them in his pocket. He patted himself down again and then realized he was holding them in his hand. He clicked the car unlocked.The passenger door still didn’t open. Right, he had to click it twice for this side. 

Someone came up behind him while he was staring at the pile of jackets, which was too big to be carried all at one time. He didn’t know how he was going to get them all inside without dropping them. He hoped it was Mitch standing behind him, because if he’d just bounced then it made Dylan pretty pathetic for worrying about the jackets. Dylan was at his max threshold for patheticness for at least the next century. 

He turned around. It was Mitch. 

Mitch’s face finally went un-blank when he looked at Dylan. He reached out, like he was going to hug him, but Dylan curled away. He didn’t want a pity hug, as if he was some fan who’d started crying too hard to actually ask for an autograph. 

“I’m going to show you the new place,” Mitch said. 

“What?” Dylan asked. 

“Can you drive?” 

Dylan frowned. “There are all the jackets.”

“It’s good, we’ll bring them,” Mitch said. “Give me your keys.”

“It’s my car,” Dylan said, but he gave Mitch his keys, and stood there watching while Mitch moved his jackets from the passenger seat into the trunk. After Mitch had cleared the space, he came up behind Dylan and put him in the car too. Dylan didn’t even know how he’d done it, but he had been standing on the side of the road and then he was sitting in the car. 

Mitch fucked with the radio during the drive back, but other than telling him to _watch the road, you’re swerving_ , they didn’t talk for the drive back. 

It was strange being in the passenger seat of his own car. Dylan had never sat here before. It was pushed too far forward, and he hadn’t known, just made his passengers sit with their knees up against the dashboard all this time without even realizing it. 

It wasn’t until they were driving down the street Connor’s building was on that Dylan thought to ask, “Where are we going?”

“I’m going to show you,” Mitch said. Then, “Where’s the garage thing?”

Dylan passed him the fob out of the cup holder, and Mitch opened the gate. Maybe they were going to park here and walk to where Mitch’s condo was. It made more sense than paying for street parking.

They went to the elevator and Mitch pushed a button. Dylan looked at himself in the mirrored walls, partly because he didn’t want to look at Mitch any more, but also because he only just realized how awful he looked. Would it have killed him to look in a mirror _before_ leaving the house? He still had toothpaste on the side of his mouth.

“Are we getting Connor?” Dylan asked. 

“Yeah,” Mitch said. 

“And then where are we going?”

But Mitch didn’t answer that. 

Connor was back in the condo, which was rare these days, but he didn’t want to come with them. 

“I’m Skyping with PR in a bit,” he said.

“Reschedule it,” Mitch said. 

“Reschedule this,” Connor snapped back.

“Davo,” Dylan started, but he didn’t know how to follow it up. 

“Everything is fucking hard, all the time. I don’t want this to be hard too. If Mitch wants to move out, he can move out, I don’t care,” he said. He actually did sound like he didn’t care, his voice steady and low. 

Dylan felt calm up to and including in the actual moment in which he found his hands reaching for the glass on the table beside him. And then he threw it on the floor. 

His brain was still pretty calm, but all the sudden the pressure on his chest was unbearable. He opened his mouth to take a breath, but ended up shouting, “You’re both fucking assholes and I can’t stand either of you,” instead. 

“Stromer, chill,” Connor said, and in that moment Dylan realized that he didn’t actually feel calm at all. 

“What the fuck is so hard for you that you can’t stick around for five minutes of whatever dumbfuck thing Mitch is on about now?”

“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Connor said. “And I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“No, you want to talk with your fucking PR team. What do they have cooking now? Maybe a gold casting of your entire body to put downtown so everyone can worship at the altar of fucking --”

“I’ve got a therapy appointment,” Connor said. “You stupid fucking dick.”

“Oh, well.” Dylan trailed off. Connor had been seeing a sports therapist for most of their teenage years, but Dylan had thought he’d stopped seeing the guy once he’d actually made the show. 

“Things have been insane this summer,” Mitch said. He wasn’t looking at either Dylan or Connor, just staring into the neutral space in front of himself. “Contract negotiations, and before that you were in the playoffs, and then I guess next year you’re going to single-handedly win the cup for them, right?”

Connor’s face cracked and he looked so deeply miserable that Dylan didn’t recognize him. It was like a third person had appeared -- there was still the Connor that Dylan could see objectively, and the Connor that he loved, and now there was this whole new Connor.

Connor covered his eyes with his hand. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it right now,” he said from behind his hand.

“Why don’t you want to talk about it?” Dylan asked. 

“You think I’m lucky,” Connor said. 

“We’re all lucky and also it sucks,” Mitch said. “How long until your therapy appointment?”

“Twenty minutes,” Connor said.

“Can you just come with me until then?” Mitch asked. “Please?”

So they got back onto the elevator. Dylan’s head was trying to do twelve things all at the same time, so he got massively confused when the doors opened on a floor that wasn’t the lobby, and Mitch took off. 

“Mitch,” he said, but Mitch was already halfway down the hall, so Dylan just had to run after him. 

Mitch pulled his keychain out of his pocket and tried to open a door. They didn’t have keys to any of the neighbour's places. Mitch was trying to get into the wrong unit. Someone was going to come to the door and yell at them. 

Except, bizarrely, Mitch’s key worked, and the door swung open. 

“Umm,” Dylan said, following Mitch inside. He reached out blindly behind himself until he made contact with Connor, and dragged him in by the hem of his t-shirt.

“Leave your shoes on,” Mitch said. “The floors will get your socks dirty.”

The condo was completely empty. Connor came inside so that they could close the door, but then refused to go any further. Dylan walked into the living room and looked out the window. It faced a different direction from Connor’s living room window, but it was the same kind of view of a million highrises.

Dylan turned around, and looked at Mitch, whose shoulders were hunched, hands jammed into his pockets.

“You bought a condo in Connor’s building,” Dylan said.

“No shit.”

“It’s not on the same floor.”

“It was the only one available. Jesus, Stromer.”

Dylan started walking through the unit. It had the same galley kitchen right off the entryway that Connor’s had, but the cupboards were really dark. Dylan liked the look of Connor’s light ones better, but he wasn’t going to mention that now. The living room was way bigger though, and then somehow there were also way more bedrooms. It was like Connor’s unit but the walls led to Narnia: really big, but in a weird way.

“Why is it so big?” Dylan asked. 

“The other owners merged two units together. So, like, my address is technically 2104 and 2105. Like it’s two condos but I have both of them and they’re attached.”

“Baller,” Dylan said. “What are you going to do with this room?” It had a pretty big walk in closet. Like it wouldn’t have been a big closet for a house, but basically the fact that there was room to step a whole human body inside of it made it bigger than both Connor’s closets combined. 

Dylan realized that he had been inspecting all of the corners of the room, but Mitch still hadn’t said anything. Also, he realized that he was scouting real estate like some old man, or specially like his own father, who always had to prowl the entire layout of any new place he went to. So that transformation into his dad was happening a bit faster than expected. 

“Mitch?” Dylan asked, as he tested to see how far the window would open. 

Not at all, was the answer to that. 

He finally turned around and realized that Mitch had a horrible expression on his face. 

“Oh my god, what?” Dylan said. “It’s a fucking bedroom. How bad can it be?”

“I thought this could be like. Our bedroom.”

“What?” Dylan asked. Connor, who had been standing stubbornly in the entryway, must have heard. He finally walked over to join them in the bedroom.

“This one has the biggest closet, which we fucking need because Connor’s place is a pit right now. And then there’s an extra storage locker, because this was two units, so that’s like three units total with Connor’s, ‘cause like I thought he could just rent his out or we could keep it for when we have guests or something. But that would be enough space if we could keep all the extra shit in the basement.”

Dylan spun in a full circle. It was still just an empty bedroom. He looked at Mitch, at the blank wall, at Connor’s blank face, and back at Mitch again.

“Why did you break up with us if you bought us a condo?”

“Like firstly I didn’t break up with you, I just stopped squatting at Connor’s place.”

Dylan gave him a look.

“Whatever. So then I was going to buy my own place, because that was what made sense, except I was looking at these places with my real estate agent, and everything was like way too small, and I kept thinking about how you were obsessed with curtains --”

“Literally not obsessed,” Dylan interjected.

“And thinking like, oh, Connor would hate this bathroom because it’s got the black counters and black shows --”

“Toothpaste, yes, dude, I know,” Dylan said, because he’d heard Connor bitch about toothpaste smears basically every day since he bought his condo, like fuck, bud, just use a washcloth and wipe up after yourself occasionally. But he didn’t want to clean, he just wanted a bathroom that looked clean.

The muscle in Connor’s jaw twitched, like he was clenching his teeth, but he didn’t say anything. 

Mitch said, “Okay, well, this place has speckly counters, and blinds, plus I got them to leave the curtains in as part of the like sales agreement thing and like, fuck. There. I bought you guys a condo and I think you will probably like it here.”

“You broke up with us and then you bought us a place to live,” Dylan repeated.

“Yeah and basically you have to live here for sure because it was like $1.3 and my mortgage is insane.”

“You have to ride McDavid’s dick for that,” Dylan said. 

“That’s not funny,” Connor said. He scowled at them, and Dylan was going to be like, _Yeah, I know, mo money, mo problems, sorry, buddy_ like some sensitive shit, but he accidentally looked over at Mitch, who was going beet red as he tried to keep a straight face, and all the sudden they were both laughing way too hard for the actual situation. Dylan was worried he was going to start crying when they finally quieted, but then Mitch started giggling again and Dylan did too. They sounded like cheetahs but that was better than emo crying in Mitch’s bizarrely expensive condo. 

Connor didn’t laugh, but when Mitch flung his arm around his shoulders, Connor hunched over so he’d fit under Mitch’s arm better. And when Dylan came up beside them, he wiggled his fingers until Dylan took his hand. 

“Are you mad because this is way more dope than the condo you bought?” Mitch asked. 

Connor huffed. “It’s dirty and empty,” he said.

“Yeah but you’re still going to move in, right?” Mitch asked. He had a shit eating grin that looked real until Connor took too long to respond, but the grin stayed locked in place. Mitch could do fake-neutral almost as well as any of them, but sometimes Dylan forgot how well he could do fake-happy. 

“You really want help with the mortgage, eh?” Connor said. 

Dylan’s stomach twisted, and he tightened his grip on Connor’s hand. 

“No, because I’m fucking in love with you,” Mitch said, leaning over so that he could make eye contact with Dylan as well so that Dylan knew he meant both of them. “I’ll say it first, whatever. I know it was my bad for bailing.” 

“Well, good, I guess,” Connor said. “You shouldn’t have done that.” 

“You bailed, too,” Dylan said, making sure to keep his tight grip on Connor's hand. “You guys both left me.” 

“And then I bought a condo,” Mitch said. “Don’t forget that part.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to therapy again?” Dylan asked Connor, after giving Mitch a nod of acknowledgement. 

“You would have said I was being stupid,” Connor said. 

“I wouldn’t have,” Dylan said, and then caught himself. “Or, like, I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry if I’ve sucked and been a petty bitch. I know it’s also hard for you in different ways, and I’m happy for all the good stuff. For both of you.” 

“You guys make me happy or whatever,” Connor said awkwardly. “I like it and I didn’t want to bring up the stupid heavy shit. I have to deal with so much shit all the rest of the time and I guess I wanted the stuff with us to just be, you know.” He rolled his eyes, like he was preemptively making fun of himself. “Nice.” 

“Probably not that nice to have to sneak off to therapy appointments,” Dylan said. It was weird to feel guilty even while he was still feeling like he was, for the most part, in the right about everything that had happened. 

“Are you fuckers going to move in with me or what?” Mitch said. “Because I kind of feel like you’re being assholes on purpose.” 

Connor snorted. “We’re obviously moving in. We’ve been living together for months.” 

Later, after Connor had gone down for his therapy call, and then come back upstairs, they all sat on the floor in the living room and actually talked about it. They obviously tried to skip that part and just have sex instead, but there was no furniture and the floors were dusty and they all seemed to be feeling kind of tender, like they needed more care than would be possible on the dirty floor of the empty condo. 

So they talked about how it would be fair for them to split chipping in for Mitch’s mortgage, and what they should do about Dylan not having any Oilers stupid-money, and about what would happen if the Coyotes sent him down to the A this time, and how Mitch was going to feel living here by himself most of the year because Dylan and Connor were both going to be leaving Toronto at the end of the summer. They talked about what Connor was going to do the next time he woke up stressed in the middle of the night, which was no longer going to be _lie there frozen, staring at the ceiling, so he didn’t wake either of them up_. 

It was both incredibly exhausting and a million times easier than Dylan had ever thought it could be. Not talking worked out okay with just-buddies, because, yeah, it made sense to keep things fun and avoid conflict with your friends most of the time. But it just felt like a relief to talk about this stuff with Connor and Mitch because they weren’t buddies. They were boyfriends and they were going to live together. 

They went back to Connor’s condo to sleep, but then obviously Mitch wanted a blowjob the minute that they were back in the land of furniture. 

“You’re always trying to get me to suck your dick,” Dylan complained, even as he was tugging at Mitch’s knees to get him positioned better on the bed.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “You’re really good at it.”

Dylan hadn’t been doing much, but he still felt like he had come to a sudden halt. “Oh,” he accidentally said out loud.

“ _Oh_?” Mitch repeated. 

“I don’t know, dude. I guess I didn’t know you thought that.”

Mitch gave him a squinty look. 

In his secret heart -- or maybe not even his secret one, because, yeah, he worked as hard as he did because he wanted to be better, be the best, get that win, but also because he really, really wanted everyone to think he was doing a good job. He was probably a little too easy for a _good job_ , when it felt earned at least. That was probably the truth about all three of them. Apparently Mitch hadn’t realized that, because if he’d said it like that from the beginning, Dylan probably would have been blowing him three ways to Sunday on demand. 

Connor took on ball-holding duty while Dylan blew Mitch, because Mitch liked a nice steady hand holding his balls, well, basically always, but especially when he was getting blown. He came pretty fast, and it must have been a good one, because he got red-faced and a little teary afterwards. It was more than was normal for any of them after sex, so they took a break to cheer Mitch up (“Well why did you dump us if it made you so sad?” had not helped, but Connor busting out a bag of all dressed chips from their secret cheat days stash had), and then, after another break to clean chip crumbs off the bed, they got back to the sex. 

“How about I fuck Dylan and Connor fucks me?” Mitch said. 

“Why do you get to be in the middle? Dylan asked. 

“Because I shottied it,” Mitch said, and then immediately: “Shotty middle.”

Dylan looked over at Connor, who shrugged, keeping a straight face, like, _What can you do, he shottied it?_ And then he cracked, the corners of his mouth curling up.

It was one of Mitch’s stupid porn ideas that didn’t work, and, as Mitch’s dick slipped out of his ass, abruptly and kind of painfully, for the dozenth time, Dylan thought about bringing up their no-imitating-porn rule, but like, whatever. He’d let Mitch get away with it just this one time. 

It got better when they stopped trying to move as much. Mitch got his dick at least halfway into Dylan’s ass, which actually happened to be a totally decent amount of dick in the ass. Dylan clenched around him, held his own cock, and happily suffocated under the weight of both Mitch and Connor’s bodies. Even Connor couldn’t get much movement to fuck Mitch, so it was like they were this three person blob that just rocked and writhed and sweated on each other, but like in a good way. Dylan didn’t have enough room to actually jerk himself off, because of the being smushed situation, so he just held his cock tightly. It was one of those long, incredibly slow builds to orgasm that ended up being massively satisfying when he actually got off. 

Mitch was fucking loud and he thrashed when he came, made such a fuss that Dylan missed Connor’s orgasm entirely, and it was just… good. He lay there, still face down on the bed, Mitch and Connor only slightly less on top of him now that the actual fucking was done, and felt tender and raw and okay about it. 

“Should we shower?” Mitch asked. 

Dylan didn’t bother lifting his head to reply. He could hear Connor grunt, but he made no movements either. 

“Jesus christ, did I break both of you?” Mitch said. “I am incredible at sex.”

Dylan wanted to say something, like, _I’m fine_ , or maybe, _stop trolling me, you stupid fucker_ , but he could not make his tongue work. 

Eventually Mitch would go get them a towel, or they’d all fall asleep sticky, or they’d get a second wind and make it to the shower. Maybe someone would want to fuck Dylan again, because his ass was all open, but not like _too_ fucked, just enough that it might be really fun to have a second round. Maybe they’d go to IKEA tomorrow or maybe they’d go to EQ3 instead, because Mitch kind of had a good point about that. Maybe they’d try to carry a few boxes of stuff over to the new condo, or maybe Dylan would make a trip to his parents’ house to tell them that he had moved in with his boyfriends, and it was for real so he was actually packing up his stuff from his childhood bedroom this time. 

They’d do some of that, or all of it eventually, but for that moment all Dylan had to do was lie there, Connor’s breaths hitting his shoulder because Connor was kind of panting, still coming down from it. Mitch traced his own number across Dylan’s back, presumably because he thought it would be enough to pester Dylan out of his orgasm stupor. It felt like they were at the finish line and at the starting line all at once. It felt like being home.

**Author's Note:**

> From the Very Secret Beta Notes of Threeturn: "u and ur cute canadian mysteries. i think you guys just have more acronyms than we do. is that like a social democrat thing"
> 
> I’m on tumblr [here](http://disarmd.tumblr.com)


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